Anarchy Rising Book 2: A Hunted Wasteland

Basic outlineIs one tyrant 3000 miles away or 3000 tyrants one mile away preferable? For make no mistake even though the vast majority of San Francisco had no idea who, what, and where Asher was, his presence and claim on the city acted as a physical barrier to much of the supernatural world which had failed to find its own stronghold in the chaos of mirco nations North America had become.But now Asher is gone, the lycan packs are decimated, the citadel all but destroyed, and the covens in disrepair and their absence has left a power vacuum within the last unclaimed city on the west coast. And then the “Barons” came. San Francisco, in the absence of the four powers, became divided into dozens of micro factions, each acting independently from one another, their territories carving up the city like a jigsaw puzzle, and even more small factions without the strength to hold their own territory roamed the city as small traveling gangs. 6 months after the fall of Asher, the “Barons” and their fiefdoms still skirmish across the city, each vying to take control of more and more territory for a variety of reasons but so far none of the Barons have the power or influence to break the stalemate and gain an advantage over their peers. And while the city is far from peace or stability, the stalemate between all the barons and rigid little states they have created for themselves has brought some sense of order to the city, breathing new life in San Francisco’s desolated remains. The city is more populated than it has been since the end of the wars, commerce has resumed and even some amenities had returned to various parts of the city. Small skirmishes still erupt amongst the Barons and none have given up on trying to achieve supreme control but over the last 6 months the weakest barons have been destroyed and the many that are left have not yet been able to achieve enough of an advantage over their peers to eliminate them from contention. Thus 6 months after the fall of the nephalim the skeletal remains of the city are for more city than hunting ground, refugees have become immigrants and a cold war has given way to frequent small skirmishes.

What does this mean for the players?The large monolithic power structures of the 4 factions from last season are all but gone, thus players must find their place in this rather different city, whether they have teamed up with a particular baron, formed their own fiefdom of influence, become part of a roving gang, or are simply now an immigrant looking for some place “safe” is up to their discrection

Characters who are legacies (from the last book) need to decided what their character has been doing for the last 6 months including the initial chaos that the power vacuum created, the short but intense war that erupted as all the barons carved up the city between themselves, and what they have been doing since the “relative peace” has returned to the city (about 4 months ago.) Barons(please google these locations until I can get a localized map of each an pictures up) 1. Lord of Masks• Location: metreon, moscone center and yueba Buena park• Appearance: tall humanoid who is always wearing a different mask.• Alignment/goals/motivation: currently all three are unknown he is a being which was powerful enough to carve out an area and seemed to have little trouble holding it. • Fiefdom: The Lord of Masks fiefdom is tightly controlled, and ordered (not militaristic) but safe and takes in a fair number of immigrants.

2. Dionysus • Location: palace of fine arts• Appearance: fit, pretty male youth of maybe 20 with a wreath of grapes circling his head and a loose fitting purple toga with a gold chord acting as a belt. Dionysus is a normally seen with a full wine glass or goblet and barefoot.• Alignment/goals/motivation: Dionysus (bacchus) is the greek/roman (other cults) god of wine and excess. Music, dance, pleasure and drink to a mad level is what Dionysus is about, spreading these concepts is his main goal. He is not evil but the levels of excess he encourages can’t classify him as good or benevolent either. • Fiefdom: Dionysus’s fiefdom is a den of excess and pleasure, nudity, sex, alcohol, dancing, music are everywhere in a giant mix which is half party, half orgy and all chaos. Dionysus is always happy to take in immigrants.

3. Dragon• Location: Alcatraz• Appearance: European style dragon with deep red scales. In his human form appears as cold middle aged man in an expensive suit and coat with salt and pepper hair, coal black eyes and smoking an unlit cigarette.• Alignment/goals/motivation: It’s a dragon so greed is the name of the game. The more wealth the Dragon can get the better. Not so much interested in increasing his territory but his wealth.• Fiefdom: The Dragon, ever an enterprising sort, has agreed to offer protection for those on his island and ferry some immigrants over as long as they can pay his fee.

4. Coyote• Location: AT&T Park (baseball stadium)• Appearance: Coyote is a shape shifter and can appear as pretty much whatever he wants, but his two most popular forms are a giant Coyote, and a dark haired, tanned youth wearing a leather jacket. • Alignment/ goals/ motivation: Who knows, he is a trickster spirit and the only motivation that seems to make sense is that he enjoys having fun and cutting the high and mighty down a peg. • Fiefdom: Coyote’s fiefdom is pretty carefree and loosely organized, running things isn’t really his forte and even less so is organization. Nevertheless his charisma and manner has attracted a fair amount of the younger immigrant crowed.

5. Demons• Location: Treasure island• Appearance: Demons will normally appear as human as they have taken over and possessed a human host. The leader of this group of demons has not been seen.• Alignment/goals/motivation: they are demons, evil is in the job description, so is expanding pain suffering and overall bad thing. However what their motivation for having taken over treasure island an vying for the city isn’t known.• Fiefdom: a location where everything wants to kill, maim, steal your soul or otherwise make your life miserable in a variety of hellish ways, not surprisingly they don’t see a lot of traffic, and have made getting across the bay bridge a crucible in its own right.

6. Turiel (in Ty’s body)• Location: Saint Ignatius (church where he was last encountered• Appearance: slightly built with dark hair and pale skin, wearing an expensive black overcoat and top hat. The only change between human Ty and fallen angel Ty are his glowing golden eyes.• Alignment/goals/motivation: As fitting a fallen angel Turiel is evil, arrogant, prideful and has a contempt for humanity. He is not into wanton destruction as are the Demons or material gains, but more about carving out his little kingdom on earth to spite his heavenly father.• Fiefdom: despite his contempt for the vast majority of human kind turiel is trying to carve out his own little kingdom so is forced currently to treat immigrants under his control humanely and few if any are aware of his actual nature.

7. Rev (exorcist)• Location: traveling. Rev’s and his team live out of a customized Semi truck and are constantly on the move throughout the city.• Appearance: Revs is stall roughly 6’3” with mess brown hair and grey eyes with broad shoulders and a powerful build. He wears a priests cassock customized for combat and utility as opposed to tradition.• Alignment/goals/motivation: Not the most devoted clergy member however he is an excellent exorcist aided by strong telekinetic powers. He views it as his job to protect people from as much harm as possible and was sent to the city to provide some semblance of church presence with the crumbling of the church as him and his team are self sufficient and don’t rely on a base of operations as the citadel did.• Fiefdom: none, travels around in a converted semi truck

8. Jonathan Winters • Location: roaming: Winters really isn’t the organized sit down type and manage an area type, the whole ruling things idea really holds no appeal to him. Him and his little band of anarchist psyhcos roam around doing what they do best, sowing destruction. • Appearance: John is tall and lanky with wild black hair and piercing bright blue eyes.• Alignment/goals/motives: chaos, simple enough• Fiefdom: none

9. Stein Location: Pushed back into the underworld of the city, Stein controls the underground tunnels to the northeast, where the now ruined Citadel used to boast control. His small army is led by fanatically devoted turncoat exorcists and ex-soldiers, with the grunt work being left to volunteers, both those who actually wished to join, and those who were made to.Appearance: A tall corpse-pale man with red eyes and medium-length twisting white hair. His face shows the only skin as his old suit, gloves, boots and doctor's coat have been turned into black regalia. As a new infernal creature, he is unable to hold his faceless demonic shadow form for long, and therefore usually remains in human shape.Alignment/Goals/Motivation: Seeing himself as necessarily evil, Stein acts on logic and ambition, attempting to take over the masses of San Fransisco, not utterly destroy them. He recently developed and employed a ritual that strips away one's will, making those who refuse to join no longer have the choice. Anything that stands between him and this goal is to be removed.Feifdom: While the underground provides a source of secrecy and transport, Stein makes use of several hastily re-built dilapidated buildings on the outskirts that can be accessed only through the air or from below, as a wall of concrete and rubble was constructed to keep out any who would wander nearby. It is unclear where exactly much of the infrastructure lies, though refugees who are courageous and curious enough to look hard enough often get picked up, whether they wanted to or not.

10. William (serpent coven leader)• Location: legion of honor, having escaped/ been forced out of Alcatraz, and the disappearance of Samantha, William was left as the most powerful vampire in the city and their de facto leader. Always one for opulence he’s taken over the Legion of Honor building. • Appearance: William is an average sized man with light blond hair and whitewashed blue eyes. He has a high class, rich English accent and is normally wearing expensive and tailored suits• Alignment/goals/motivation: Being an immensely old and powerful vampire William does view humans as cattle, though he is fully aware that livestock is a resources and not inexhaustible. His pride has taken quite the hit lately having lost the war with the Dragon coven in the Pacific Northwest, and Asher’s actions having decimated what was left of his serpent coven. He hopes to rebuild his forces and retain his foothold against the heavy hitters that now populate the city.• Fiefdom: William realizes that his forces need to be fed and with all the other powers in the city, free range humans are going to be hard to come by. So in exchange for his protection immigrants can exchange blood for safety.

11. BeowulfLocation: A traveling band of hunters, heros, and servants.Appearance: The outburst of ancient power as humanity fell led to the reincarnation of several beings, and Beowulf was one such lucky being. Given his old nordic body and long blonde hair, the tall man boasts both muscle and charisma, all wrapped up in fur armor.Alignment/Goals/Motivation: He treats the new landscape as a new challenge, its inhabitants as new prey, and its people as new clan prospects or servants, depending on their capabilities. His only goal is to move from one heroic triumph to the next, always hunting to provide for the next feast.Feifdom: Only those capable of keeping up with the talented men in the group get the best food and gear, the rest are allowed the scraps and protection of the hunters so long as they take care of all the tedious chores.

12. NyarlathotepLocation:??Appearance: Whatever it feels like at the moment.Alignment/Goals/Motivation: Nothing mere mortals can comprehend, and those mad enough to try both never make it and die in fantastic ways.Feifdom: None, though there may be a trail of corpses, or a trail of revived bodies, or a trail of squid monsters that shoot lasers and critique poetry.13. Titania• Location: Golden gate park (from freckle lake over to California academy of science)• Appearance: an unearthly beautiful and elegant women whose features are too sharp and perfect to ever be human. She has slightly pointed ears, multicolored cat eyes and elegant shimmering wings. • Alignment/ goals/ motivation: Titania is a fairy queen and as such is in the upper echelons of Fey royalty, in a power structure which is intentional complex and convoluted (just eh way the fey like it). She has no interest in the concrete jungle which she finds garish an ugly but would love to control all the wooded areas and pretty buildings within the city, for reasons which wouldn’t make sense to human’s anyway.• Fiefdom: As a Fey and whatsmore Fey royalty, Tatania has no interest in ruling humans, however she finds them delightful play things and her and the rest of her court find people just too much fun to not allow into their area. However once your in Tatania’s domain you’re playing by fairy rules.

14. Saint

15. Anansi• Location: san fransisco main library, city hall, UC Hasting, and san fransisco supreme court• Appearance: Anansi is a spider, a really big, spider often appearing as a giant Darwin bark spider, but is able to , morph into massive versions of many different species. He is able to take human form and when doing so has a freckle pattern that looks like 6 additional eyes.• Alignment/goals/motivation. Anansi is known as the master of all stories and similarly to Coyote is a trickster who relies on his wits and cunning as opposed to just his brawn. Fittingly he seeks to gain and save as many stories, books, and knowledge as he can and his goals normally revolve around this pursuit. • Fiefdom: Anansi has a sparsely populated fiefdom (something to do with arachnophobia and giant webs everywhere) however he does let immigrants in who are in the pursuit of or may ad knowledge.

16. Witch of Thorns• Location: presidio, mikinnon stotsenberg battery. • Appearance: The Witch of Thorns looks like a girl in her late teens with black/blue hair, pale blue eyes, porcelain skin an a tattered white dress. She stands no more that 5 feet 2 inches high and is always barefoot.• Alignment/goals/motivation: The Witch of Thorns encompasses the dark aspects of nature, the brutality, growth run rampant, mutilation and corruption that can be found in even the most pristine and calm places. Like the most rampant and predatory of weeds she wants her dark forest to spread and encompass all it can with not balance or conceivable end. • Fiefdom, a dark forest where the sun is permanently dimmed by the thick canopy of the rapidly growing trees and old growth forest floor which appears closer to a few hundred years old as opposed to a few months old. Immigrants really avoid it at first foreboding site. However though the area be small, the constant growth and change makes it a labyrinth which few can escape shall they stumble into the witch of thorns domain.

17. Rakshasa• Location: pier 48 and surrounding area (including an abandoned carnival)• Appearance: the Rakshasa is a humanoid of average height but powerful build with a tigers head and tigers paws for hands with elongated phalanges with wickedly sharp claws. The beasts eyes burn with fury and hatred and it is decked in golden jewelry• Alignment/goal/motivation: evil, perhaps no creatures are as rampantly cruel for no other reason than cruelties sake as a rakshasa, these beasts are vicious, power hungry and enjoy inflicting pain and suffering for no other reason than they enjoy it. Members of an ancient race which is thankfully all but a memory now even to the supernatural world, any remaining Rakshasa is one of the oldest and most wantonly hateful things in existence.• Fiefdom: With a creature who enjoys creating pain and suffering just to hear the screams and cries it isn’t a surprise that many immigrants of any species avoid the beasts lair. However through its dark sorcery it has enslaved a numbers of creatures as slaves and servants.

18. Rasputin (wizard)

19. Bai Ze• Location: CSF medical center• Appearance: Bizarre is te best way to describe this creature, it has the legs of a cow, the body of a tiger, the face of an old man with a large eye in its forehead, with 6 atop its head, and two on each flank ,3 eyes running down either side of its body and is completely white. It speaks very intelligently and many different languages and wears a white doctors lab coat, with holes cut out for the eyes along is body.• Alignment/goals/motivation: Good, the Bai Ze is attributed with teaching exorcisms in china, and how to cure plagues in Japan, it is a protective spirit whose goals revolve around protecting humans from disease, injury or possession.• Fiefdom: The Bai Ze has started up, taken over and operates the UCSF medical center making it the only working hospital in San Francisco.

20. Shadow• Location: varies• Appearance: varies, it’s a living shadow which can take on many shapes but when it attacks often appears as a shadowy humanoid though is not limited to doing so.• Alignment/goals/motivation: no one knows but it certainly does kill things, a lot of things• Fiefdom: none the shadow shows up seemingly at random throughout the city, if your shadow starts acting weird run.

21. Vela’s family:• Location: 2724 Pacific Avenue, and the surrounding houses.• Appearance: (Danny please send me pictures of them)• Alignment/goals/motivations: Survivors, is the word which best describes Vela’s family and, their wards and retainers. They survived the wars, they survived the ensuing sea of monsters, they survived the fog, they survived Alexander Crusic and the fall of the citadel, and they survived the last few months of chaos. Granted they are almost certainly the weakest of the Barons and certainly don’t have the personal power or army to push out an acquire more territory; however their little bastion of influence was fiercely defended by the families retainers and a handful of haggard exorcists who avoided the fall of the citadel. And more than one would be Baron fell while finding out that they could hold on long enough for one of their rivals to take advantage. And that is the Crux of the family’s existence, they have simply proven too much trouble to eliminate, and committing resources to do so enforce would cause any of the other Baron’s a tactical disadvantage.• Fiefdom: This fiefdom is small only a couple houses, constantly under supplied however they take in as many immigrants as they can, though everyone who becomes a member is expected to work.

22. Black knight

Last edited by Leiv on Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:56 pm; edited 2 times in total

Just a heads up, Maxwell would be reemerging at Treasure Island Post-Demon outpost.

Spoiler:

and would most likely begin/attempt to initiate a cleansing and after that's done; leave a member behind to take over the Island as its fiefdom. Though the head Demon with a few followers may remain behind (hidden) but majority may perish as Maxwell would declare an all out war and would leave the Island after he will believe that safe passage is restored for new immigrants.

If you had some other major plans (story wise) I can scrap the above and simply leave the Island once his "visions" begin appearing as part of "that" story

Though as a compromise: (before the headaches begin) I can have it that small skirmishes are fought whenever the demon battalions try to invade Maxwell's occupied territory which would probably begin as a small section of the vast Island .

hmm... well both sides would be heavy "Mystic" users. Though their tapping into the power pool would be different (different sources of magic) so I guess it would initially end up looking like a Draw :/

Though looking at a long-term effect, the end/victory will depend if the Demon army would be replenishing themselves with new units as the old die. If that is the case then definitely the match will end as a draw with no clear winners or losers. But if they are not gaining new units/possessions/etc then Team Maxwell may be able to chip away the outnumbered horde to gain victory. (Or depending on the source, if there is something like a rift in space from which the Demons keep pouring in, then if the team can locate such a place and mange to plug it shut... that can also give them a hopeful chance at future victory.)

Well anyways I'll first finish up my Character sheets and see how the Story goes once I re-enter Earth Reality after the 6-month time skip.